Public gaze

“ Many outside forces, however, do go to influence public opinion. The most obvious of these forces are parental influence, the school room, the press, motion pictures, advertising, magazines, lectures, the church, the radio. ”

“ Those drawing-rooms, those little circles, so charming with the familiarity of their privacy, were themselves the rigorous abodes of the deadliest kind of public opinion—the kind that lives and glitters in a score of penetrating eyes. ”

“ What is now spoken out in broad daylight, open to the judgment of all and to the criticism of public opinion, will then be discussed in secret conventicles, and those who now are satisfied with speaking or listening will then, no longer controlled by public opinion, feel an irresistible desire to act. ”

“ After that there are the instruments by which he broadcasts facts and ideas to the public; advertising, motion pictures, circular letters, booklets, handbills, speeches, meetings, parades, news articles, magazine articles and whatever other mediums there are through which public attention is reached and influenced.
Now sensitiveness to the state of mind of the public is a difficult thing to achieve or maintain. Any man can tell you with more or less accuracy and clearness his own reactions on any particular issue. ”

“ By the time the public has wiped it out of its eyes and sneezed it out of its nose and coughed it out of its larynx, the dust has settled in a heavy layer, clues are obliterated, and the public lifts its skirts and chooses another direction. ”

“ The smile that plays upon the speaker’s face awakens emotions of complacency in those who hear, even before he speaks. So does that weight of character, which is the matured fruit of long public services and acknowledged worth, soothe, in advance, the irritated and angry crowd. ”

“ They hear your speech and resolutions cried through the streets, and sold out of shops in several separate editions. They hear the taverns and public-houses filled with talk about you. They have contrived by their endeavours to implicate you in a 'treasonable conspiracy,' to excite a strong feeling of some sort or other respecting you in every human breast. And this is their way of putting a man down! ”

“ The curtain rose again, and I approached my audience with a smile on my lips. I judged of this change in my face by those of my spectators, for they began all at once to share my good humor.
How many times since have I tried this imitative faculty on the part of the public? If you are anxious, ill-disposed, or vexed, or should your face bear the stamp of any annoying impression, your audience, straightway imitating the contraction of your features, begins to frown, grows serious, and ill-disposed to be favorable to you. ”

“ Not without a slight shudder at the danger, I often perceive how near I had come to admitting into my mind the details of some trivial affair,—the news of the street; and I am astonished to observe how willing men are to lumber their minds with such rubbish,—to permit idle rumors and incidents of the most insignificant kind to intrude on ground which should be sacred to thought. Shall the mind be a public arena, where the affairs of the street and the gossip of the tea-table chiefly are discussed? ”

“ It is the voice of the city-population that has too often been taken as the expression of public opinion. “The voice of ‘the people’ is very often nowadays only the voice of the city crowd, faintly re-echoed, if echoed at all, in the smaller towns. Sometimes also the noise is that of a few editors of newspapers.” ”

“ Our whole life is devoured by idlers, inquisitive folk, loungers who are bored with themselves, and even by reporters of all sorts, who force their way into our homes, to inform the public not only as to our private conversation, but as to the colour of our dressing-gowns and the cut of our working-jackets! ”

“ Those features of the world outside which have to do with the behavior of other human beings, in so far as that behavior crosses ours, is dependent upon us, or is interesting to us, we call roughly public affairs. The pictures inside the heads of these human beings, the pictures of themselves, of others, of their needs, purposes, and relationship, are their public opinions. Those pictures which are acted upon by groups of people, or by individuals acting in the name of groups, are Public Opinion with capital letters. ”

“ Each section of the public has its own literary organ, and the mass of the public is without any suspicion that the value of these organs is relative to their being nearer a certain ideal centre of correct information, taste, and intelligence, or farther away from it. ”

“ And these mentions were meant to be read by the Public, and the Public read them; and, moreover, they that wrote the puffs in the newspapers would often look out from the door of the newspaper office as the Public went by and call out: "He of the knowing eye is a very great man" ”

“ Cry down, with all the power that is in you, public exhibitions that are daily undermining and uprooting the morality of this great nation, which affects, as it must continue to affect more and more day by day, the destiny [840] of the world. They influence the fashions; they fill the public streets with impurity. Their effect is in the very air we breathe, the press we read, the pictures that meet our eyes on every stand. ”

“ When we appear in public, a space is opened to us. We pass in any crowd without touching a shoulder. The poor, to whom we give alms, recoil before our touch. The woman who would speak to us would be cast out, as a pariah. ”

“ For many educated minds the arena of politics and public life is a weariness of dust and disgust, to others it is a fascinating study, to be watched from the comfortable seat of a spectator. To her it was a home. ”

“ Every movement is chronicled as being of surpassing interest to the general public. If my lord and my lady entertain their friends at home the details are considered as important as those of a battle in the Far East or a debate in the House of Commons. Even if my lord or my lady dine or sup at a restaurant the fact is duly chronicled. The untitled leaders of the smart set, our wealthy American visitors, the stars of the opera and the stage, share in the general publicity. Celebrities, whether of rank or wealth or talent, are standing items of "Fashionable Intelligence." ”

“ When a Philadelphia paper copied one of my little poems, suggesting some verbal improvements, and predicting recognition for me in the future, I felt for the first time that there might be such a thing as public opinion worth caring for, in addition to doing one's best for its own sake. ”

“ All phases of opinion, including the most earnest and honest inquiry into social questions, finds some voice in print, but—leaving aside times when public opinion is greatly aroused—those phases that are backed by wealthy interests have a great advantage in the urgency, persistence and cleverness with which they are presented. ”

“ Judging from the rapid growth of public opinion which we have recently witnessed with regard to other institutions, we may expect that in a few years, or even months, if "the still small voice" which, at present, gives scarcely audible expression to half-formed desires, be neglected, it will swell into a loud, distinct, and irresistible demand ”

“ Round the news-shops—whence poured a very flood of papers and pamphlets—in the cafés and public places, crowds of men formed and dispersed and formed again, who all at once flashed into lightning-like action at the cry "To arms, to arms!" ”

“ Your public men, for instance, are required to live in glass cases, so that they may be constantly inspected behind and before. Your press interviewers beset them on every hand, take down their chance observations, record everything they say and do, and how they look and feel at every moment of their lives. ”

“ A truly intelligent class—almost too intelligent—with a touch of the morbid: the people of a large city. And this public might in a few years' time become the ideal audience: intellectual and passionate. ”

“ There is but one secret in this species of literature,—the ever-watchful observation of the public; and when it is considered that this is a Parisian public, the task is not quite so easy as some would deem it. This watchfulness, and a certain hardihood that never shrinks from any theme, however sacred to the conventional reserves of the general world, are all the requisites. ”

“ All writers have borne testimony to the power of a speaker's eye in impressing an audience. This influence which we are now considering is the reverse of that picture—the power their eyes may exert upon him, especially before he begins to speak: after the inward fires of oratory are fanned into flame the eyes of the audience lose all terror.—William Pittenger, Extempore Speech.
Students of public speaking continually ask, "How can I overcome self-consciousness and the fear that paralyzes me before an audience?" ”

“ The public consists of people living in stifling towns and they have lost all knowledge of the open air, and Nature, and healthy poetry: they must have their poetry theatrical, glittering, painted, reeking.—Ah! ”

“ Another line of work for this fourth class of good citizens would be an organized and ever-increasing vigilance in regard to the work of the city’s servants, and the creation of a strong public sentiment which shall demand a purer, cleaner press and a suppression of the vile literature which is poisoning the imagination of thousands of our youth. ”

“ The Public is not this or that class, this or that type; the Public is an hypothetical average human being, endowed with average human qualities—a distillation, in fact, of all the people in this hall, the people in the street outside, the people of this country everywhere. ”

“ The press begins to teach and to excite; those of like minds assemble together at public meetings, and the discourse of an enthusiastic speaker exercises its influence. Gradually the number of those who are interested increases; from the strife of different views, which contend together in public, is developed a knowledge of what is necessary, an insight into the ways and means, the will to meet such requirements, and, lastly, self-sacrifice and devotion. ”

“ We will ever respect and inculcate virtue, both public and private, and deprecate vice in all its dazzling forms. Nothing shall ever appear in our columns to disturb the present public tranquillity, unless we see danger lurking therein, which duty requires us to expose to public view. ”

“ The public gets only a portion of the picture, and from an enormous group of cases, a few contrasted ones are picked out for the sake of the dramatic effect. The limelight of public notice is upon them and the softer lights and shadows are omitted. ”

“ There are Houses of Parliament, newspapers, clubs, mechanic’s institutes, pot-houses, prayer meetings—but which of all these speak public opinion? A weekly gathering of articles from daily papers is not public opinion. Opinion after dinner is not public. ”

“ In common with the scenario writer, the preacher, the statesman, the dramatist, the public relations counsel, has his share in making up the mind of the public. The public quite as truly makes up the mind of the journalist, the pamphleteer, the scenario writer, the preacher and the statesman. The main direction of the public mind is often irrevocably set for its leaders. ”

“ Already aware of the bad feeling existing between the men, the neighbours had been now informed (no doubt by the labourers present) of the deplorable scene that had taken place under my bedroom-window. Public opinion declares itself in America without the slightest reserve, or the slightest care for consequences. ”

“ It has no clear voice; the confused and local utterances of a dispersed innumerable press, of thousands of public speakers, of books and preachers, evoke fragmentary responses or drop rejected into oblivion. I have been told by countless people where I shall find the typical American ”

“ To read intelligibly, audibly, and agreeably, to speak with taste and elegance, to address an audience—whether a mass assemblage of the sovereign people, or the servants of the people, in Congress assembled, or an intelligent audience gathered for intellectual instruction and enjoyment, each require careful and persevering practice, critical discrimination and disciplined taste. ”

“ The connections of the ear with vital and out-going thought and emotion are immensely closer and more219 varied than those of the eye. Vision is a spectator; hearing is a participator. Publication is partial and the public which results is partially informed and formed until the meanings it purveys pass from mouth to mouth. ”

“ Because of the importance of channels of thought communication, it is vital for the public relations counsel to study carefully the relationship between public opinion and the organs that maintain it or that influence it to change. ”

“ it has invented and established Public Opinion, which is an attempt to organise the ignorance of the community, and to elevate it to the dignity of physical force. ”

“ Magazines, the public forum, the chautauqua, the church, political gatherings, trade union meetings, women's clubs, and news serials in the moving picture houses supplement the press. But taking it all at the most favorable estimate, the time each day is small when any of us is directly exposed to information from our unseen environment. ”

“ Presently persons, specially gifted with the ‘spectral sight,’ formed a class by themselves, and were sent about at the public expense from place to place, that they might see what no one else could see. ”

“ I invite eye care professionals, the media, and all public and private organizations dedicated to preserving eyesight to join in activities that will raise awareness of the measures we can take to protect and sustain our vision. ”

“ I think, too, we may add to the great honor of science and the arts, that their natural effect is, by illuminating public opinion, to erect it into a censor, before which the most exalted tremble for their future, as well as present fame. ”